Yahoo! Movies: New Politics/Religion DVD Releases

Kids in America

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:09 -0000

When the principal begins an authoritarian crackdown on free speech in her high school, a group of seven diverse seniors band together to stage a series of demonstrations to protest the hypocrisy they see in their school administration. (1 hr. 31 min.) Release date: Feb 2, 2010

Malcolm X

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:08 -0000

Spike Lee brings the life of African-American leader Malcolm X (an intense Denzel Washington in an Oscar-nominated performance) to the big screen in this sprawling, epic biographical drama. Born Malcolm Little, son of a Nebraska preacher, on May 19, 1925, he became one of the most militant leaders and charismatic spokesmen of the black liberation movement before his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on February 21, 1965. The film sweeps through his early life as a small-time hustler and thief with his friend Shorty (Lee), his conversion to Islam in jail, and his subsequent life as a controversial spiritual leader and husband of Betty Shabazz (Angela Bassett). Malcolm's tragic assassination is presented as a conspiracy of Nation of Islam leaders; the film shows how his philosophy has been realized in the lives of others who have been moved by his words. Filmed with great visual flair by Lee, the film is a work of entertainment as much as it is a historical artifact. Washington captures the spiritual conversion of the hero with a sincerity that is entirely as believable and ultimately moving as it was in the book that inspired the film, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X. (3 hrs. 21 min.) Release date: Feb 2, 2010

License to Wed

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:07 -0000

An all-star cast inhabits this romantic comedy about a couple who must endure a humiliating obstacle course of a marriage-training program in order to gain permission to wed from their church's over-the-top reverend (Robin Williams). Hilarity follows as the lovebirds (Mandy Moore and THE OFFICE'S John Krasinksi) put their devotion to the test. From the moment they met in a Starbucks line, the couple was prone to cute mishaps and clumsiness, but they also displayed amazing chemistry. Then Reverend Frank and his creepy child assistant intervene, putting Sadie and Ben through a torturous process which involves couples counseling, bedroom surveillance, and a very funny sequence in which the couple must take care of two robotic fake babies while shopping for their registry at Macy's.

While Krasinski's average-guy expressions are fun to watch, his persona on the big screen isn't too much of a stretch from his role in the television sitcom. And Moore's typical likability becomes irritatingly upbeat in several scenes. Packed with OFFICE cameos, LICENSE TO WED promises laughs up until the end, where it veers towards the trappings of an archetypal romantic comedy. (1 hr. 40 min.) Release date: Jan 19, 2010

The Kingdom

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:06 -0000

Actor, writer, and director Peter Berg (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) delivers a fearless, action-packed political thriller with THE KINGDOM. Shot in the Middle East with unsettling immediacy, the hand-held cameras put viewers right inside the action, while the tension between American FBI agents and their Saudi counterparts maintains an interesting uncertainty about who's "right" and who's "wrong." The bad guys, however, are unmistakable: the film opens with a brutal terrorist attack on an oil company compound in Saudi Arabia, where a visiting FBI agent is killed. Back home in Washington, fellow agents Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx, RAY) and Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner, ALIAS), want revenge, and will do whatever it takes to gain access to the investigation. Fleury all but blackmails a Saudi prince to get clearance against the wishes of a timorous attorney general, and flies overnight to the scene of the crime. Accompanying him are the no-nonsense forensics expert Mayes, Southern-fried bomb authority Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper, ADAPTATION), and Jewish smart aleck Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT). Once there, they encounter the resistance of a Saudi government more interested in getting the Americans safely out of the country and avoiding conflict, rather than in solving the crime. They are assigned a smarmy handler with a weak stomach (Jeremy Piven, ENTOURAGE) to make sure they stay out of trouble. The team must navigate a maze of bureaucracy to begin collecting evidence, but they have an unlikely ally in their Saudi escort, Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom, PARADISE NOW), a scrupulous and intelligent officer whom Fleury befriends. Soon enough, procedure and protocol give way to car chases and explosive fire fights, and the current bleak political climate of extremism and violence is portrayed in a stark light with no easy answers. (1 hr 50 min) Release date: Jan 25, 2010

Hunger

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:05 -0000

Renowned English video artist Steve McQueen's feature film debut, HUNGER, is a cinematic punch to the gut. McQueen brings a visceral intensity to his retelling of the hunger strike instigated by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and several other detained Irish Republican Army members in the early 1980s, who were determined to live in a Northern Ireland free from British rule. In prison, Sands and other IRA members--including Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) and Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon)--at first protest by refusing to wear the standard prison garb, but soon, they take their protest dangerously further.

McQueen comes from an experimental background, and it shows. He and co-screenwriter, the acclaimed Irish playwright Enda Walsh, blow all the prison movie clich�s out of the water. They break their film into three distinct acts. In the first, Gillen and Campbell are tormented by prison guards and made to suffer in a cramped, feces-smeared cell. In the second, Sands and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) have a startling battle of wits--and emotions--that occurs in a dazzling extended one-take sequence. Lastly, we watch as Sands slowly withers away to nothing. It's impossible not to make a political film out of this furiously political material, but McQueen chooses to concentrate on the more visceral, tactile elements of the story to drive his point home. HUNGER is one of the more exciting directorial debuts of recent memory. (1 hr. 36 min.) Release date: Feb 16, 2010

Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:04 -0000

The first feature film based on the popular direct-to-video children's series featuring talking Christian vegetables, this is an animated retelling of the story of Jonah and the whale, but with talking vegetables. (1 hr. 23 min.) Release date: Feb 16, 2010

Worlds Apart

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:03 -0000

A girl is torn between her faith and her budding emotions in this coming-of-age drama from Denmark. Sara Dahl (Rosalinde Mynster) is 17 years old and has been raised in a family of strict Jehovah's Witnesses. Sara follows the tenets of the faith and often joins her family to distribute church literature door to door in hopes of attracting new converts. Despite the Dahl family's devotion to their church, there has been a great deal of tension in the household--her father (Jens Jorn Spottag) has been unfaithful to her mother (Sarah Boberg), and while he's deeply contrite, she's unwilling to forgive him. One night, Sara goes out with some friends from school and they end up at a dance club where she meets a handsome boy named Teis (Pilou Asbaek). The two feel an immediate attraction to one another, and as Sara falls for Teis, she begins to encounter a world and ideas she's never considered before, and starts to question the doctrine that she's been taught since childhood. However, Sara's parents are uncomfortable with her relationship with Teis, so they discuss her new attitudes with John (Anders W. Berthelsen), the pastor at their church, and he confronts her both privately and publicly about the morality of her new love. TO VERDENER (aka WORLDS APART) was screened in competition at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. (1 hr. 48 min.) Release date: Jan 26, 2010

Chevolution

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:02 -0000

On March 5, 1960, Che Guevara, one of the architects of the Cuban revolution, attended a memorial service for 75 men who died while explosive cargo was being unloaded from a ship in the Havana harbor. Photographer Alberto Korda snapped a picture of Guevara at the event, and while it went unpublished at the time, in the late '60s an Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, asked Korda's permission to reproduce the image of the then-martyred revolutionary leader. Korda agreed, and within a few years his portrait of Che, wearing a beret and looking with determination to some point in the distance, became one of the most famous photos in the world. Korda didn't mind seeing the photo appear in unlikely places, from banners at protests to T-shirts, but in 2000 he filed suit against the producers of Smirnoff vodka after they used the picture in a magazine advertisement, arguing that he never intended it to be used for commercial purposes. Filmmakers Trisha Ziff and Luis Lopez trace the strange journey of Korda's portrait of Che, from revolutionary symbol to advertising logo and an iconic but little-understood image often adopted by young people who aren't sure who the man is, in the documentary CHEVOLUTION. The film includes interviews with actors Antonio Banderas and Gael Garcia Bernal, both of whom have played Guevara on screen, and Tom Morello of the leftist rock band Rage Against The Machine, who have used the Che portrait on their T-shirts. (1 hr. 26 min.) Release date: Jan 19, 2010

Amreeka

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:01 -0000

A divorced Palestinian woman and her teenage son find their lives changing in ways they never anticipated upon relocating to rural Illinois. (1 hr. 37 min.) Release date: Jan 12, 2010

By the People: The Election of Barack Obama

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:32:00 -0000

The 2008 American presidential election kept viewers around the world riveted with the tight race between the young Democrat Senator Barack Obama and the veteran Republican John McCain. Directed by Amy Rice (FROM ASHES) and Alicia Sams (TOOTS), this documentary reveals previously unseen footage of Obama�s path to the White House, and includes his candidacy announcement, campaign highlights, election night, and his inauguration. (1 hr. 55 min.) Release date: Jan 12, 2010

In the Loop

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:31:59 -0000

IN THE LOOP is a fast-paced, lancet-witted ensemble comedy from first-time film director Armando Iannucci, based on his satirical BBC sitcom, THE THICK OF IT. The film tracks the lies, misunderstandings, good and bad intel, and PR blunders that escalate into a full-blown (fictional) crisis in the Middle East over the course of a few days, in a few conversations and meetings, in a few corridors of British and American power. Though played for laughs, the movie demonstrates how the most incidental factors (leaked papers, hastily spoken soundbites) and players (aides, interns, and low-level government officials) can influence the course of history.

The pitch-perfect cast does a great job with Iannucci's script, improvising just enough to maintain the pseudo-documentary feel of the TV show. Even when the action gets loose and rollicking, the tone is tightly controlled satire, and the humor emerges organically from the situations and relationships at hand. Peter Capaldi, reprising his TV role, is hilarious as a foulmouthed, perpetually het-up Director of Communications for the British Prime Minister. Mimi Kennedy gives a droll but heartfelt performance as an antiwar U.S. diplomat and shares some touching and funny scenes with a more subdued than usual James Gandolfini as a U.S. general with surprising views on war. And Tom Hollander quietly steals the show as the hapless British Secretary of State for International Development whose careless remark in an interview sets off the events that catapult him into deeper waters than he has ever been in. (1 hr. 45 min.) Release date: Jan 12, 2010

Tru Loved

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:31:58 -0000

Tru, a 16-year-old girl with lesbian mothers, moves with her family from San Francisco to Southern California. There, she must find new friends in a considerably more conservative atmosphere. But her budding friendship with a secretly gay jock gets complicated when she decides to launch a gay-friendly club at her high school. (1 hr. 39 min.) Release date: Jan 12, 2010

Fifty Dead Men Walking

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:31:57 -0000

Inspired by the remarkable true story of the British undercover agent who successfully infiltrated the IRA, writer-director Kari Skogland's fact-based thriller takes its title from author Martin McGartland's bestselling novel of the same name. Set at the absolute height of the Irish civil conflict, FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING begins as 22-year-old Martin McGarland is recruited by the British police to infiltrate the IRA and report back with intelligence. It's an extremely dangerous job that could result in death or worse should his true identity be revealed, yet McGartland realizes that the information he's gathering will save countless lives. At first the prospect of being discovered provided something of a rush for McGartland, though that initial buzz quickly wears off when his true identity is revealed and he's forced to attempt an impossible escape. Two decades later, McGartland is still on the run. Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess, and Rose McGowan star. (1 hr. 58 min.) Release date: Jan 5, 2010

Capitalism: A Love Story

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:31:56 -0000

What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Years ago, that love seemed so innocent. Today, however, the American dream is looking more like a nightmare as families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Michael Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal�and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. (2 hrs. 7 min.) Release date: Dec 29, 2009